Losing wild-card race is Phillies' real failure

PHILADELPHIA — Ryan Howard never took the final steps of last season and Chase Utley was not going to be able to take the first steps of this one, and at that point it should have been clear. The Phillies were not going to have an easy season, not this time, not that way.

So, they wouldn’t. Soon, Roy Halladay would be hurt, never to regain peak consistency. Shane Victorino would flatten, even in a contract year. Hunter Pence would fail as a defensive right fielder. Carlos Ruiz would be injured. Cliff Lee would be undependable. The bullpen would prove too young.

The NL East championship? Not this year, not even after a five-year rule. There was too much too early. Period. And that’s why the Washington Nationals will soon bathe in champagne and then hoist a flag at Citizens Bank Park South.

That’s that story.But it’s the other one — the more recent one — that should pain the Phillies, their fans, their manager, their general manager and their president. It’s the other one, not the original one, that best illustrates the deepest failings of the franchise. It’s the one that included a 7-3 loss to the Washington Nationals Thursday that magnified the widening gap between the franchises. It’s the one that makes the onrushing offseason so important.

That’s the story about how the Phillies would wander into a newly manufactured playoff race in September, with a chance to be successful, with odds long but manageable, and with the core of their operation whole … and crumple.

No, the Phillies were not division-championship ready, as it would happen, this year. But as recently as Sept. 12, they were within three games of the St. Louis Cardinals for the second National League wild card, had just run a winning streak to seven with a 3-1 victory over Miami, and seemed to have been reborn.

“We’re in it,” Charlie Manuel declared at the time. “We’re dead in it pretty good.”

Finally, after an offseason of rehabilitation and a summer of strife, the Phillies had a chance at a sixth consecutive postseason. They had their Utley-Howard-Jimmy Rollins nucleus, their three ace pitchers, an All-Star closer and a knowledge of how to win in September. And then, beginning with a four-game series in Houston, they played just as horrifyingly as they had all season, losing three of four to the sorriest side in baseball.

“The experience part and the inconsistent part that I talked about all year long, when you see us in a series like what happened in Houston, I think we went right back to it,” Manuel said before the game Thursday. “Between our pitchers walking guys and hitting guys and making mistakes defensively and things like that, we put ourselves in position to be beaten three out of four games there. We kind of beat ourselves in that series.”

There was that series. And there was last weekend, when the Phillies managed five total hits in two losses to the Braves. And there was this week, when they won one of three from the Nationals. It was all of that late in a cockeyed season that cost a team with a payroll once up to $170,000,000 a playoff spot.

Even if Ruben Amaro elected to ignore the Phillies’ first chance at fulfillment, the second one has to have him in a chill sweat. To have that team in that spot with that chance to make the playoffs and then turn so ordinary is a squealing plea for substantial change.

“Disappointment?” Manuel said. “It’s been quite an adventure. It’s been up and down. At times, it seems like it’s been a long season. But as I sit here today, it seems like it’s been short.”

It was both. There was a long season, one with too many impediments. And there was a short season, one that should have been excuse-free. As the Phillies left Citizens Bank Park Thursday for the last time this season, it was that short one that would haunt them for a while.